Storytelling is the essence of communication. The elements of storytelling are like letters of the alphabet. When you know how to use them, you can tell your best story.

Element 9: Research

Research is the foundation upon which compelling stories are built.

Case study: Abacela 

What it is:

An award-winning winery located in Southern Oregon’s Umpqua Valley. It is best known for producing world-class Tempranillo, the grape that makes Spain’s famous Rioja wines.

Why it matters:

Abacela founder Earl Jones was a fan of Spanish wines and a medical research scientist. His wife Hilda was a medical technologist. They are by training and inclination people who study, analyse, test, and investigate. When Earl started wondering why he couldn’t find any good-quality American Tempranillo he didn’t shrug and leave it. He did research.

Earl’s quest to find the secret to great Tempranillo took him across countries and decades. He travelled through Spain and across the States, interviewing winemakers, studying soil and climate records. Reviewing the latter, Earl hypothesised that climate is the secret to growing top notch Tempranillo grapes.

As any good researcher would, Earl put his theory to the test. This meant identifying an American region with a similar climate to Rioja, moving there with his family, buying land, planting grapes, building a winery, and making wine. The initial results were good: Gold medal winning Tempranillo wines that outmatched Spain’s finest. More than 20 years on, Earl and Hilda are still researching, still growing, still writing new chapters of their story.

In their own words:

Abacela, in 2016, is a world-class, multi-award winning winery and viticulture success story. But 21 years ago when founders Earl and Hilda Jones planted its first vines they had no way of knowing what the outcome would be. They were scientists with zero winemaking experience who left secure careers and trekked 2700 miles west, kids in tow, to test a hypothesis.

Abacela was an experiment they hoped would answer a question that had puzzled them for years: Why doesn’t America produce any fine varietal Tempranillo wine?

Earl and Hilda probably weren’t the first enophiles to wonder why the great grape of Spain’s famous Rioja wines was mysteriously absent from American fine wine. However they were the first to approach the question with scientific rigor, form a hypothesis, then devote their lives to testing it.

This is the story of how one ordinary family’s curiosity and determination transformed their lives, built one of Oregon’s best-loved wineries and influenced winegrowing not only in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest but across America.

Read the Abacela story 
Practice: “Interview people, if you can, and if it’s relevant (no one who was alive in 1717 was available for me). But I have done interviews that have enlightened me on ballet, horse riding, frogs, injuries and country policing, for example. Prepare good questions beforehand, tape the interview, and take good notes.” via Sherryl Clark

Remember: “Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.”
~Zora Neale Hurston